Never Describe the Sky as Azure by Philip Metres

[snowynight]

 unless it’s made of stone.

           لاجورد  Lāzhward

 

migrating from Persia,

           smuggled from Farsi

 

to Arabic & thrown

           like a wingless bird

 

across the sky-dark sea

           until its version

 

spills from English mouths.

           Lapis lazuli.

 

O trap of beauty,

           you are a fiction ...

 

Exhausted at day’s end

           of an oven-summer

 

I duck out of the house

           into the truth of twilight

 

blue: no other name

           than azure, azure,

 

and no other home

           the color of this sky

 

struck above this earth,

           no path to heaven

 

except through this dirt.